Indeed, between the diapers and the paper towels I could easily drain a hectare of swampland. Granted, the disposable diapers more than wipe out any smugness points I may have earned by riding to the store instead of driving, but I have confidence in the next generation, and they at least deserve to be dry and comfortable until they grow up and are forced to solve all the problems we're passing onto them.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has postponed work to finish New York’s third water tunnel, a project that for more than half a century has been regarded as essential to the survival of the city if either of the two existing, and now aged, tunnels should fail.

That's not good.

The new tunnel has already been completed and is carrying water into Manhattan and the Bronx. But segments that would supply Brooklyn and Queens, home to five million people, though also virtually finished, still await the building of two deep shafts.
Heh heh. They said "deep shafts."If calamity or age forced the shutdown of City Water Tunnel No. 2, which is 80 years old, the primary water supply to much of Brooklyn and Queens would be lost for at least three months, city engineers said, the time it would take for an emergency activation of the sections of Tunnel No. 3 in Brooklyn and Queens that have already been finished.

This will come in handy when residents are desperately searching for a deli that's not yet sold out of Poland Spring, though by that time the waterfront will be underwater so hopefully that streetcar will have sub-aquatic capabilities.

BROOKLYN — Mayor de Blasio's streetcar could interfere with a waterfront bike route that's been in the works for more than a decade, DNAinfo New York has learned.The mayor's much-touted streetcar line is likely to travel a similar path to the partly completed Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway — a bike lane that will cover 14 miles of Brooklyn's waterfront from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge once it's completed.A spokesman for the mayor confirmed the city can't guarantee that the streetcar won't interfere with the greenway project.

This aqueduct also comprises a part of the BSNYC Gran Fondon't route, and I can now announce with something approaching confidence that I will very probably but not 100% definitely lead another Fondon't in May:

So be sure to mark your calendars.

Where exactly should you mark them? Well I can't tell you exactly, so better to just pencil in a question mark on every day of the month.

And as for what this Fondon't will entail, expect it to start at a location convenient to ME and to end someplace where there's beer. (You can rest assured I'm doing plenty of hands-on beer venue reconnaissance in the meantime.)

The bicycle giant Specialized apologized today after G&O Family Cyclery tweeted photos of a street advertising campaign pasted on the wreckage of their former Greenwood shop that says, “BETTER BIKES COME FROM BETTER BIKE SHOPS.”G&O was severely damaged in a major gas explosion a month ago, prompting a big community effort to raise money to help the shop find a new location and keep its expert staff (including a fundraiser organized by this blog, Peddler Brewing and Familybike Seattle). G&O recently announced a new temporary location a block north on Greenwood Ave.

Oops!

In their defense, Specialized feels bad about it, and they blamed the whole thing on their indiscriminate wheatpasting subcontractor:Marcheschi said the company contracts with street advertising companies in several cities including Seattle. Specialized provides the artwork for the ads, but the contracted companies (in this case Poster Giant) finds and chooses the locations.“They’re looking to opportunities where there are plywood surfaces they can put these wheatpastings on,” said Marcheschi. “It’s really unfortunate that this was one of those surfaces.”He has contacted Poster Giant to have them remove the ads as soon as possible.

In other words, this form of "guerilla" advertising is the analog equivalent of when you're reading an online article about a motorist running down a pedestrian and you keep getting pop-up ads for your local Hyundai dealership.

91 comments:

136. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the system in such a way as to protect freedom from technology, let him consider how clumsily and for the most part unsuccessfully our society has dealt with other social problems that are far more simple and straightforward. Among other things, the system has failed to stop environmental degradation, political corruption, drug trafficking or domestic abuse.

I've amended your latest twitter pict to account for the fact that you have 18 children. You are welcome...I also found the perfect going away present for Joe and Devon. It fits with the bearded artisinal theme of their trip and will keep their pour over coffee warm.

The Coffee Brake Mug: of course there is a bad beard involved. Of course there is a bike with bullhorn bars and a top-tube pad. Of course there is a mention of mustache wax. Of course there is pour-over coffee apparatus. Of course there are hipster outfits complete with their little hipster hats.

i think it was a sears. big round red plastic body. it had a mechanical cable that snaked to the front wheel where it attached to a piece that went on the axle. That piece had a little wing that fit in between the spokes and thus spun around to turn the cable.

worked well for the five bucks it cost.

also kind of stupid to have two versions. how much simpler to have the face printed on two sides that you can flip over to switch from mph to kmh

OMATA state that the One has 'impressive battery life', lasting for around 24 hours

sheez. i change batteries in january. for some reason, the cateye RD400DW sensor battery sometimes doesn't make it through the season. i get really pissed if i have to change the $.25 battery in august. if i have to charge that fuck-o every day, y'all better pry my guns before my hands are cold. or watch out.

I like the way that round speedo looks, but the pricing and battery life are absurd. I still use a Cateye Cordless 2 that I got at least 25 years ago for $20 or so. It does everything I want and I only have to replace the battery every two or three years. But if people are silly enough to pay $300 for a chain and $120 for a frame pump, then by all means take their money for a $600 speedometer.

The Omata speedo will not be an expression of maximum irony unless it requires wireless connection to an iPhone in your jersey pocket to tell you how fast you're going. It also should be assembled by marginally trained workers in Detroit using Chinese parts, and sold as made-in-America-by-skilled-craftsmen.

Joe may be eaten by a bear in Alaska; but Joe's not going to be chowing down on Devon, no way her facial expression is going any where near a bike tour. No Devon peddling away also means no road trip BJ's for Joe.

A few times a year, someone will approach me about buying a bike. They're people who've watched cycling boom with the installation of protected bike lanes here in the lower mainland, and it's only cause they see old women like me making it work that they've come to believe that maybe they can do it, too. But they're still living in a dream world, cause they're always shocked and dismayed to discover that they'll have to drop more than three hundred loonies to find a bike worth riding. They'd keel over at the suggestion that anyone would pay $600 US greenbacks on that fucking meat thermometer.

Sure, braid lady has good form, but she's catching a lot of wind with those linebacker handlebars.

they'll have no problem dropping 800 fun coupons for an ipad that will require replacing in 3 years. Or dropping 40-50 grand on a dino eater that they'll probably dump in 3-5 years. But dropping a couple hundred for a bieky that should last at least 6,7 years and probably would be good for 10-15 with minimum expense in maintenance is horrifying.

my guess is they don't see biekys as fun but as a chore to get their exercise or get healthy.

further proof that people in general are idiots. current furor around here by the idiots with their heads up their analogs is that the roadsides are filthy. who should clean it up? what? if the town does it, we have to pay more taxes! no one has mentioned that if the pigs going by didn't toss their trash out the window, the roadside wouldn't be a mess to begin with.

Some people are finally a little curious about Bike Share bikes incredible safety record, but still a lot of "damning with faint praise" going on. At least they prove how worthless helmets are:

"Using a bike-sharing scheme is way safer than hopping on your own bike and speeding off through the city streets. In fact, not a single person has died on a shared bike in the U.S. since bike sharing began in 2010."

"According to findings from the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), the crappy bikes and plodding, cautious cyclists might be the very reason bike sharing is so safe."

"The final big factor in bike-sharing safety is infrastructure. Most bike-sharing stations are in dense downtown traffic areas, which means lower car speeds. Also, if the stations are located on the curb, then the users are "more likely to complete their journey riding on the sidewalk."

"The MTI study concluded that the health benefits of cycling outweighs the risks of riding without a helmet."

"The fact is that cycling just isn't that dangerous, especially bike sharing. Here's what one of the study's experts, an emergency-services supervisor and licensed paramedic, had to say on the matter: "I have not seen a bike-sharing wreck. I asked my colleagues. We cannot recall a bike-sharing accident. It has always been personally owned bicycles. It is our opinion that we believe bike-sharing is safer."

I was in your freakin city at the end of last month for a few days and almost got run down by Casey Neistat on a skateboard while crossing Broadway in Soho with the signal. I would never have known who he was if I wasn't a semi-devoted reader of a certain mildly popular bike blog. Other lame celebrity sighting was some actress who looked familiar but whose name I don't remember at The Ship. Not like the old days when your might get served a beer by Rockets Redglare in some dive bar in the village.

Pestering & bothering people with advertising is douchey enough, but then I guess they're like, hey how could I make this even more douchey? How can I just not even have to rise to this exalted level of humanity? And the answer is, don't even do it yourself - outsource it. Because hey, you're too douchey to be bothered doing your own bothersome douche campaign, right? Now you've got douche bragging rights: "Not only do I advertise, I don't even do the work myself. That is where 3rd-party malware comes from, and where this Specialized postering faux pas comes from.

I wish Real Ted would send Fake Ted a "package" because Fake Ted is a phony poser, and a hypocrite lover of modern technology (computers, programming, bots, gmail, etc). Unfortunately they don't let Real Ted send bombs or use the internet, but it would be a great fantasy headline: Unabomber Kills Pathetic Loser! Says That Faker Knew Nothing Of My Work.

Sorry to hear it, JLRB. But it sounds like you're not posting from your local ER, so there's that.

Spokey - Right?!? More often than not, they have it in mind to use the bike to commute during the fairer months of the year, and if you were to compare the cost of transport by any other means, it would be a no-brainer to drop a grand.

the 2016 IRS business mileage deduction is 54 cents. so for a round trip the IRS is allowing over $1 / one-way mile. i dare anyone to convince me the IRS is being overly generous here so we can take that as a conservative cost of using a dino eater.

if you live just 12 miles (us that is) from work, you would pay for the $300 bike with one month of biek-sickening commuting. and the following week you've now bought yerself a nice bottle of scotch.

And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.That leaves only me to blame 'cause Mama tried.

JLRB - Sorry to hear about the crash. No bones broken, bike still in one piece (?), Nurse Babble coming over to dress the road rash and spoon feed you Ben & Jerry's. Sounds like you will be OK and back on the saddle again. Hope so.

You have really piqued my interest in the Croton Aqueduct Trail. Using your photos and text as a guide, I pieced together your route featured in the article for the "Brooks Blog", as I intend to check it out. I'd like a road-worthy set of tires for the paved sections and wondered if you think I could get away with a set of 700x28s or if I should go with the security of knobbier 700x30s that are currently on my 'cross bike? Thanks.

Glen Larimer you should be fine on the 28's. I rode Snob's Bike Week ride the day before last year's 5 Boro Bike Tour on 23's and covered the Croton Aqueduct fine except for a few very short muddy sections. (This was the ride before the Fondon't.)

Thanks folks for the well wishes. No serious injury - bike and knee both worked pretty well on the way home. All in all I got very lucky. Might not use the chain bridge route in rush hour for a while - it's never good - but it is my quickest way to work.

Spokey - I like your logic - I use the IRS mileage to justify bike purchases. Scotch is a good extension.

I'm a sine-tist, and even measured astronomical parallaxes for a while (GAIA is going to take over that field, so I quit).

I'm also an avid cyclist who rides skinny-tired Tour Dee France type bikes, and I like to keep my tires topped off to avoid pinch flats.

Never once in my long career have I worried about 'parallax error' in reading the analog gauge while inflating my tires. How could I have been so stupid? Why haven't I died already because of this oversight? I'm flummoxed.

About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!